lost and wandering
by squeakyswings
Summary: "Weasley," he mutters, pushing her away from him. "I said water, then bed. I did not say anything about a snogging session in the Charms corridor." — Scorpius/Rose - For Amy


**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_.

**A/N:** Happy latelatelatelatelate birthday, Amy (FollowThisRhythm)! I hope that the month and a half since your birthday have been magnificent, and also that this is okay. I'm afraid I don't quite know how to treat Scorpius and Rose, but here they are!

_june_

For the sixth time, Rose takes the Hogwarts Express to King's Cross and stumbles off the train in a swarm of redheaded cousins. She waves to her uncle Harry and aunt Ginny, who are collecting James and Hugo and Lily and Albus and would be collecting Rose, too, if she had not arranged for something different this summer. Hugo takes her owl—a spotted bird which would attract unnecessary attention on the Muggle train—and she wheels her suitcase through the gate, exiting into the Muggle side of King's Cross feeling as if she looks utterly non-magical.

Of course, Lily has strung some pond scum in Rose's red curls, a stringy mess which Rose only discovers once she is seated on the train to Edinburgh's Waverley Station, so her non-magical-ness may be compromised. Or, anyway, her appearance of sanity is.

"Shit." Rose glances in apology at the woman sitting a few rows down from her as she tries to scrub all of the sludgy dirt and wetness from her hair. She should have stuck some itching powder in Lily's trunk—Rose has been trying to be nicer lately, but being nice leaves life full of missed opportunities.

Rose tugs out a pocket mirror and pulls her hair back into a ponytail to cover up Lily's disaster, scowling at the faded freckles over her nose. She's never quite perfected the spell to banish them completely, although Merlin knows she's tried.

Rose draws her knees up to her chin and turns to look out the window. They're speeding out of London now, heading back towards Scotland, and she can feel bursts of excitement beginning in her chest. When her mother had told Rose over Christmas that she was securing her an internship in the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures _again_, Rose had bit her tongue and silently vowed that she would not step foot inside the Ministry ever again. She hadn't said anything to her mother, though. She had returned to school, drafted seven letters to her aunt Audrey, and had finally sent one in late February.

Audrey and Percy had replied in early March, Audrey suggesting she apply to an internship at the _ScotsWizard_ and Percy offering a possible position in the Edinburgh governmental branch. Rose had crossed her finger and sent off an application to the daily newspaper, and then she had broken the news to her mother.

Hugo had taken it worse than either of their parents. "What do you mean you're not going home for the summer? Do you know what'll happen to me, alone with Mum? She'll force me to work your internship _and_ mine, and Dad'll want to bond on weekends with Quidditch matches and I'll have no time at all to myself and why are you so awful, Rosie?"

Rose hadn't bit her tongue for Hugo. "I'm sorry I've ruined your summer, but it's my last one before I leave Hogwarts and I'd really rather not spend it doing what I've done for the past three years. I doubt Mum'll make you work my internship, too—she'll probably hand it off to Al or Lily. You and Lily could play pranks all over the Ministry and get kicked out of your supposedly voluntary positions and go on the run and wouldn't that be nice?"

She had glanced up from the textbook she was reading to find Hugo staring at her. "I do believe you've gone mad." He had shaken his head and pushed away from the table in the library.

But now she is on her way north out of England, surrounded by people who do not automatically associate red hair with fame, who do not know that magic buzzes under Rose's pale skin. She breathes easily here, watching the countryside pass through the spotted windowpane.

Rose slips a Muggle novel from her bag and begins reading, her eyes skimming over the familiar words as the minutes pass. The journey takes four hours, and when they pull into Waverley Station Rose feels suddenly apprehensive. She hasn't seen her aunt and uncle since Lucy and Lorcan's wedding two summers before, when Rose had been only fourteen and had clung to ideas the way her uncle Harry clings to honour.

But when she steps from the train she sees the tall man with greying red hair and his petite blonde wife standing beyond the ticket machines and they both wave to her, their faces splitting in grins, and Rose feels her excitement flood back.

"Rose!" Her aunt pulls her into a hug when she reaches them, and her uncle clasps her on the shoulder and takes her suitcase.

"Is this all you have? Molly and Lucy used to come off the train with so many trunks and cages and suitcases that we had to get strangers on the street to help us," Percy says, as he begins leading them from the station.

Rose laughs. "I sent Hugo home with some of my stuff."

"It was nice of him to take it," Percy says. "If Ginny had tried that with any of us..." he drifts off distractedly, and Audrey grins at Rose.

"How are you, dear? How was the rest of the school year?"

"It was fine. I'm ready for summer, though. I'm looking forward to working at the paper."

"We're excited to have you here. It gets lonely without the girls, sometimes."

They've exited onto the street, and they pass a group of seven primary coloured street acrobats as Percy continues to a bus stop up the street from the Station. "We should have mentioned, the Fringe Festival is going on right now—every summer the city floods with," Percy lowers his voice, "Muggles," ordinary tone again, "from all over. They're everywhere in Edinburgh, performing all sorts of things. It's entertaining for a while—you'll probably enjoy it."

Rose glances back at the acrobats, still bending each other into unlikely shapes, not moving out of their spot on the pavement. A crowd is gathering around them, people pulling out digital cameras and snapping shots while only a few toss coins into the top hat set a few feet away from the red-stockinged feet of the girl in the middle. She can't imagine dressing in a leotard and posing on the street—she wonders if any wizards would consider this a legitimate job. She wonders how many Muggles do.

She shakes herself and smiles at her uncle, who is peering up through his glasses at the timetable on the screen above the bus stop. Her aunt shrugs and Rose asks, "How are Molly and Lucy?"

"Lucy and Lorcan are off in Morocco, doing some research for a book Lorcan's working on, and Molly's still in London, working for Madame Malkin's."

"I keep telling her she needs to jump ship and start her own business if she ever wants her designs to be recognised, but she's hesitant to do that, for some reason," Percy says, turning his attention back to them.

"For some reason," Audrey repeats, rolling her eyes. "She has time, darling. Not everything needs to be rushed."

"Yes, yes, you both tell me that regularly. I am trying to believe you."

"You're insane," Audrey says, but it sounds fond.

A bus pulls up to the stop and Percy says, "This is us," as he pull Rose's suitcase toward the door. The bus ride lasts about a half an hour, during which her aunt and uncle ask about Hogwarts and London and the family, and Rose grows more and more exhausted.

She hasn't been to her aunt and uncle's home since before she went to Hogwarts, but not much has changed. The stone wall out front still hides a bright and orderly garden—although last time Rose had been here it was winter, so everything had been dead—and the knocker on the front door was still a bronze Gryffindor lion. Rose ran her index finger down its nose as she entered the house.

"I've made up Lucy's room for you—it's a little calmer than Molly's—and I've got some shepherd's pie, if that's all right?"

"Shepherd's pie sounds lovely, thank you."

"Wonderful. Percy, I'll show Rose to her room, if you could please take care of dinner?"

"Of course." Percy sends Rose's suitcase Levitating up the narrow staircase to the side of the entranceway and disappears down the hall while Audrey starts up the stairs.

"She's moved most of her things, but some of them are still there. Feel free to put them wherever you want. I was going to put them in Molly's room, but I'm afraid there may be some leftover curses in there from her teenage years. She was always very private."

"Like Lily," Rose says, and Audrey smiles.

"I'm glad my daughter's not the only wild one in the family." Audrey pushes open the door and Rose finds herself in a small violet room, with wide windows draped in silver and three shelves overflowing with books. "I've checked Lucy's room for spells—you should be fine. The bathroom is through there," she nods at the door on the other side of the room, "and please make yourself at home. We are so pleased to have you here, Rose."

Rose smiles and her aunt leaves her to unpack. She joins Audrey and Percy for dinner a few minutes later and falls asleep several hours after that to the sounds of sirens pulsing streets over and drunken revellers shouting to each other across the pavement.

She settles into life in Edinburgh fairly quickly. Her internship at the _ScotsWizard_ is what she expected: writing memos and getting coffee and occasionally copy-editing short pieces that take up space on the back few pages of the paper. It's not glamorous, but it is also not grunge work in the Ministry in London, so Rose counts herself lucky.

She spends her free time reading books and avoiding thoughts. Her aunt and uncle are lovely but preoccupied and she finds herself more on her own than she's been since she was eight and Hugo spent the whole summer with the Potters in Madagascar—Al had invited Rose along, but she had gotten ill the day before they were set to leave, and so her parents had made her stay home—and Rose finds that she doesn't much mind the aloneness, but sometimes she minds how lonesome it makes her feel.

She begins wandering Edinburgh, at first to see how the Fringe Festival has transformed the city, and then to lose herself down narrow closes and side-streets—ones not featuring performers and tourists. A few weeks into summer, she finds herself at Portobello Beach, her feet sore from walking and her skin flushed from the dim summer sun.

The beach is crowded with children and teenagers, but Rose finds a spot far down from the nearest bus stop and sits in the sand, kicking off her Converse and rolling up her jeans so she can stick her feet in the icy wash of water.

She wishes she had a cigarette, even though she's only smoked twice before—she thinks she would feel less conspicuous if she had something to do with her hands. She can feel the eyes of a group of teenage boys on her, and she braces herself to act uninterested and bitchy as they begin drifting down the beach in her direction. But just as they're about to reach Rose, someone else drops down on her other side, his feet paler than hers as they dig into the sand.

"Hey, Weasley."

Rose turns her head, hair swinging over her shoulder as she pins Scorpius Malfoy with the glare she had been preparing for the Muggle teenagers. "Malfoy," she says. Her voice makes the North Sea seem tropical.

"Al told me you were spending the summer working at the _ScotsWizard_, but I didn't think it likely I'd just run into you. Strange how small the world is." Scorpius is keeping his voice steady and friendly, and Rose cannot tell whether it's a challenge for him to treat her this way.

"What're you doing here?" she asks. She's not even making an effort.

"My mum's sister and her husband have a house up here—they're on vacation for the whole summer, so they asked me to look after it."

"That's lucky."

He shrugs. "I like it here. It's sort of lonely, though. I was actually thinking about owling you—I thought since we're both here, and we, you know, get on all right, that we could get together. But now I don't need to owl you, because here you are." He looks as if he's actually pleased with this turn of events.

"Are you insane?"

Scorpius blinks grey eyes at her, so she elaborates, "When have we ever gotten 'on all right'?"

He rolls his chapped lower-lip between his teeth and stares at her. "I mean, we've never been at each other's throats, and I'm good mates with Al and Lily and I get on and James and I have never tried to kill each other, not even on the Quidditch pitch and Hugo's in my house and he's a neat kid."

"Okay. So you and various Potters and Weasleys don't hate each other. You and me, though, Malfoy? I'm not my family. You're not my friend."

"I'm not your enemy, either," he points out.

Rose raises her eyebrows. "Are you certain of that?"

"Rose," he draws out the vowel in her name, makes it sound like a whole new word.

She stands, shakes her head, says "Goodbye, Malfoy," and leaves him sitting with his feet purple in the water.

She makes it home before she falls into her thoughts.

_(back in) december_

The night before Christmas holidays, Rose makes a foul mistake. She eats dinner with Albus and Cara, and then agrees to go to the Ravenclaw party with Cara's mate Quentin because he doesn't want to be the only Gryffindor there and Cara refuses. Quentin is going because he wants to snog and/or shag Jessa Wood, and Rose agrees mostly because Quentin's been pining for ages and she figures that a bunch of Ravenclaws can't get into anything more devious than bad wine and sloppy kisses.

She and Quentin arrive in Ravenclaw common room to find the stone walls lit with torches and the fire exploding with coloured sparks. A persistent beat of music runs along the grooves in the walls and sways the blue and bronze tapestries on their hangers. It seems to Rose as if the whole of Ravenclaw and a good proportion of Slytherin have crowded into the room, and it all has the feel of a rising tide—Rose is overwhelmed the moment she and Quentin step through the door.

Quentin keeps his hand clasped around hers. "You are not leaving me," he informs her. "Not until I find Jessa."

"You are a prat," Rose hisses, but he just smirks at her and pulls her along into the crowd.

It takes him a surprising amount of time to attach himself to Jessa and abandon Rose, and in that time Rose consumes approximately _too much_ alcohol—she loses count after the fifth drink—and she doesn't want to leave when Quentin shakes her off. So she continues dancing, first with Ed Boot, and then with Wesley Smith, and then somehow she finds herself falling on Scorpius Malfoy, who is standing at the edge of the crowd, near the exit, and not moving.

He catches onto her waist. "Weasley." He sounds surprised. "Steady."

"Malfoy," Rose replies, letting the consonants sit on her tongue. "Your name is funny."

"I've heard," he comments drily.

"Yes, you would've. I though because I'm telling you it might make a difference."

He raises his eyebrows so they disappear under his white fringe. "Yeah? And what sort of difference would that be?"

"Well you should change your name." She grins at him, although it may be wider than normal because Scorpius looks concerned. "You could be, like, Scorpius Unicorn, or something."

"And _that_'s not funny?" He has his hand on her elbow. She doesn't think it's the only thing holding her up, although it might be.

"Well," she likes the feeling of "l"s on her tongue. They are challenging. "Well, well, well, Scorpius Unicorn sounds nicer than Scorpius Mal..etcetera. I don't think you're mean. Lily," Lily has a nice name, "Lily likes you."

Scorpius blinks just as someone shoves into Rose from behind and she feels a seeping wetness along her shoulder and over the front of her jumper. "I have beer on my boobs, don't I?" she asks.

Scorpius glances down, nods shortly, and takes her hand, leading her out into the corridor. "You are incredibly drunk, Weasley. I didn't think it was possible for you to get this drunk."

"Yes, well, I'm full of surp-prises." She stifles a yawn with her fist. "You are not drunk. Why are you not drunk? Everyone should be. It's fucking Christmas!"

"I was going to get drunk, but then I got accosted by a wasted Weasley and I figured that my drunkenness would be redundant."

"Oh, 'redundant.' Nice word. O's all round for your vocab...stuff."

"Merlin, Rose." Scorpius shakes his head. "Have you ever been drunk in your life?"

"Of course. I have cousins and they drink and so I drink and get drunk and did you know that Americans have a saying that is 'drunk as a skunk' and I do not understand, Scorpius Unicorn. Do skunks get drunk?"

"Even if they do, you are drunker than they have ever gotten." Scorpius reaches for her arm again. "Come with me."

"Why and where?"

"To the kitchens, to get you some water, and then to Gryffindor, where I will put you to bed with a rubbish bin so that when you wake up tomorrow you won't need to move right away."

"That's nice. Why're you nice?"

"Because you're drunk." He keeps his hand curved around her arm as they walk toward the stairs. Well, Scorpius walks. Rose alternates between a stumble and a skip.

"We don't talk ever. Why not?"

"I'm in Ravenclaw, you're in Gryffindor," Scorpius suggests.

"But that's dumb. Al's a Slyther-er and so's Lily and you talk to them."

"That's different." Scorpius pauses a few steps from the bottom of the staircase and readjusts his grip on Rose. "They wanted to be my friends. You never seemed to."

"They—Albus and Lily, I mean—are rebels. Rebels. So you're rebellion. I am not. A rebel, I mean."

Scorpius raises his eyebrows. He looks funny when he does that, with his face stretched out. Rose considers commenting on this to him, but it'll probably make him stop making that expression, and she likes it.

"Maybe you should be," he says.

"That's...what's the word? Something to do with death and stuff. By death I mean burials. Like...crypts...that's cryptic. That's it."

"Merlin, you're mad." Scorpius begins moving again. Rose follows.

"I'm drunk, sir. There's a difference."

"I meant more in a general sense." He reaches up to tickle the pear on the still life that leads to the kitchen. "Now, water, then bed."

The house elves swarm them, and Scorpius asks for seven bottles full of water. "Seven, Scorpius? I'm not that drunk."

"You'll thank me tomorrow."

He makes her drink two before they start back up the stairs, and she stops in a restroom on the third floor and then again on the fifth. When she stumbles back into the corridor after the second stop she falls on Scorpius and rests her head beneath his chin. He freezes.

"I've been thinking," she says.

"Probably not a good idea, at the moment."

"Yes, well. The moment's all I got." She pauses, presses her chin against his collarbone. "That's really deep, you know. I could be a philosopher."

"A drunk one."

"Weren't they all?" She giggles, releasing hot breaths against his neck. "No, Scorpius, listen. Stop distracting me. It's not fair."

"Okay, okay." He has his hands on her waist, keeping a little distance between her hips and his.

"Okay, okay, okay. So I was thinking, and I think that you are pretty and I think I want to kiss you. So I will."

She lifts her face from his shoulder and doesn't look at him as she moves to press her lips to his. He turns his face just before she can reach his mouth so her kiss lands on his jaw.

"Weasley," he mutters, pushing her away from him. "I said water, then bed. I did not say anything about a snogging session in the Charms corridor."

"What about the Transfiguration corridor? Or my bed?"

He bites back a laugh. She can see the bite marks in his lips. Those could be hers. "Not tonight, Rose. Come on." He doesn't touch her again.

She doesn't say anything to him but she is thinking. When they reach the Fat Lady she says the password—aurora borealis, a bit of a challenge—and then turns to Scorpius and says, "Just because I was drunk."

He shrugs. "Just because."

She falls into the silent common room and makes it to her bed. Scorpius does not fulfil his promise of a rubbish bin, but she manages to get one on her own.

She wakes up eight hours later with a splitting headache and more regrets than she could count if she had the whole day to list them. And so she takes the whole day, and then a few more, and then finds that in thinking of regrets she finds even more, and that a whole lifetime will not hold all of them.

And so she stops thinking.

_july_

Rose forces herself to stop rehashing that night. By all rights she should not even remember that night. If she had been drunk enough to say all that to Scorpius, and then _come on_ to Scorpius, and then get rejected by Scorpius, then she really should have been drunk enough to black out. But no, alcohol had conquered her judgement and inhibitions, but not her memory. Blasted thing.

And also, it could have been so much worse. Scorpius could have kissed her—he probably could have done much more than kiss her—and then they would have an even more awkward history. Or what if she had thrown up on him? That would have been much worse.

Honestly, this is just a little bit mortifying. She has no idea why she's letting it get to her so much, and thinking about it is certainly not helping. So she's pushed the experience to the back of her mind, sewn the rejection deep inside, and generally ignores Scorpius Malfoy and everything to do with him.

And now he's shown up in Edinburgh and acts like the night before Christmas holidays did not happen, like she did not spend all of spring term avoiding him. Rose is sitting on her bed in her aunt and uncle's home, desperately wishing to erase a single night from her and Scorpius's collective memory.

Rose pulls Lucy's pillow over her face, screams, and recommences Operation Stuff-Scorpius-Malfoy-into-a-Black-Hole-of-Forgotten-Boys.

This operation would be a lot more successful if Scorpius Malfoy hasn't taken it into his head to commence Operation Befriend-Rose-Weasley. He's sitting at the Caffé Nero down the street from the _ScotsWizard_ office and she runs into him in Starbucks—_Starbucks_! He's certainly the only Malfoy to ever set foot in one of those—and on Calton Hill when she takes a walk up there one afternoon. He doesn't approach her, though, just nods his head and passes her, and Rose supposes she's grateful for that. Still, though, she finds it highly disturbing that he seems to be following her. He may not be—he may just like Caffé Nero and Starbucks (ha!) and Calton Hill (much more likely)—but it seems as if he is.

On the Saturday three weeks after their run-in on the Beach, Scorpius knocks at her aunt and uncle's door and smiles at her uncle when he opens it.

"Yes?" Rose is lingering behind the corner at the top of the stairs, and she can hear the wariness in Percy's voice at the appearance of a Malfoy on his doorstep.

"Hello, sir. I'm Scorpius Malfoy, Albus's friend." Oh, using Albus. No shame. Rose rolls her eyes as Scorpius continues, "Is Rose in?"

"She..." Percy hesitates. "You know, I'm actually not sure. Let me go check for you. Here, come on in." He leaves Scorpius standing in the entranceway and Rose scurries down the hall to her bedroom, where she lands on the bed just as Percy appears in the doorway.

"I'm guessing you don't want to see him?" he asks.

She shakes her head.

"All right."

A few minutes later, Percy comes back upstairs. He crosses his arms over his chest and shifts from one foot to the other for a silent moment and then says, "I am not sure what he's done, but he seems like a nice kid. People appreciate second chances when you give them the opportunity." Rose bites her lip. "That being said, if he's done something truly horrible, tell me and I'll run after him and curse him to smithereens."

Rose smiles. "He hasn't done anything."

"Well, consider the second chance, then?"

She nods. "I will. Thanks, Uncle Percy."

"Anytime, Rose."

Rose finds Scorpius in Princes Street Gardens later that afternoon. He's sitting on a bench by the fountain, staring unseeing at a mime and the Muggles watching him. Rose sits beside Scorpius and thinks a moment before she says, "I know it's irrational and stuff, but I am still horrendously embarrassed by what happened before Christmas."

Scorpius glances at her and then returns his gaze to the mimes. "Why?"

"Well, it's mortifying. And what's worse, you act like nothing happened, which I thought meant that you understood that it was embarrassing, which meant that you thought that I had something to be ashamed of."

Scorpius turns to her and raises his eyebrows. She flushes. "Honestly? I thought that you had forgotten it—you seemed drunk enough to black out—and so I figured if you remembered and wanted to talk about it you'd mention it to me. Otherwise, I thought we could both forget it. That's why I came up to you when I saw you on the Beach—I thought maybe we could try friendship out when we were both sober."

"Oh." Rose bites her lip. "Well."

"I mean, we still can," Scorpius hurries. "It's just...you really have nothing to be embarrassed about. I've certainly acted worse when I'm drunk."

"But I tried to kiss you." If Rose's cheeks aren't redder than tomatoes, she'll sell her brother.

"Yeah, well." Scorpius leans forward, brushes a cool finger down Rose's temple. "I'm sober at the moment, and I'd quite like to kiss you, so. Let's call it even."

Rose burns. She doesn't speak for a moment. "You can."

"Can I?"

She nods. Scorpius smiles and leans in. This time Rose looks at him, and this time their lips meet, and this time neither of them turns away until someone from the crowd of Muggles cat-calls at them. And then they only break away long enough to breathe and exchange a smile before they come together again.

_august (31)_

Scorpius and Rose are sitting on a bench outside of Waverley Station after having purchased their tickets the night before they're set to leave for their last journey to Hogwarts, and Rose has her head on Scorpius's shoulder.

"This has been the perfect summer," Rose confesses.

"It has been quite nice. After we got over all that awkwardness and avoidance at the beginning."

Rose grins against his t-shirt and takes his hand. "Want to walk?"

He follows her down the path and says, "You remember when you asked why we weren't friends, back at Christmas?"

"Yeah."

"It's because I was always terrified of you. Albus said you weren't scary, but you seemed so distant from all that stupid school stuff. And fuck, Weasley, you're gorgeous and smart and in Gryffindor so obviously brave and I just felt really intimidated by you."

Rose shakes her head. "Well, you ought to know that's a load of bullshit. You're brilliant, Malfoy. And you're a decent kisser."

Scorpius chuckles. "Merlin, Weasley. What _will_ Albus say about this?"

"Probably tell me not to break your heart and tell you, 'Good one, Score,' or some such manly rubbish. I'll put a stop to it by calling you Unicorn all the time."

Scorpius stops, pulling Rose around to face him. "You'd better not," he growls.

Rose laughs, pressing her lips against his quickly. "I don't know, Malfoy, I think it suits you. But if you ask nicely, I promise I'll keep it to myself."

"Not this, though, right? All of this won't just turn in to some stupid summer thing?"

"Summer's almost over, Scorpius."

"And?"

"And this has only just begun."

Scorpius squeezes her fingers so tightly she thinks they may break, and then they continue moving, ready to wander one last night in Edinburgh's empty alleyways.


End file.
